Ocular Bionica

In 2016, Lucy has embarked on an ambitious project that has taken her out of hospital waiting rooms and into the clinical research labs where world-leading research is being undertaken.A partnership with Manchester Royal Eye Hospital’s Professor Stanga and his team at Manchester Vision Regeneration Lab, Ocular Bionica focuses on ground-breaking clinical trials that hint at a future of biomedical bionics and the hacking of humanity.

Throughout the year, Lucy has been interpreting and illustrating the story of patients who have lost their central vision to age-related macular degeneration. The artist followed them as they took part in clinical trials which, if successful, would allow them to see not only with their retained peripheral vision, but also with a central vision created by new technologies that, even in their infancy, represent a spectacular leap-forward in the treatment of sight loss. Lucy is attempting to see the world through the eyes of one of the participants in the trial and so a film became the obvious medium.“ I realised that if I wanted to show people what seeing with macular degeneration and the ‘bionic eye’ implant was like, I would need more than a static painting, and a painted stop-frame animated film seemed like a great way to achieve that”, she says, "I hope that the film will not only help viewers understand AMD and this amazing technology, but also might encourage more people to consider taking part in clinical trials just as Ray, the subject of the film did."